Meaning & use
stale
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Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Dry, hard, or tasteless because it has been kept too long, used of bread, cake, and similar foods.
Grammar: Goes before a noun or after be: stale bread, or The crackers are stale.
Patterns
- go stale
- turn stale
The bread had gone stale, so we made breadcrumbs.
She picked at a stale doughnut left over from the morning meeting.
Keep the lid tight or the cereal will turn stale.
adjectivecomparable
Smelling unpleasant and unfresh, as air or tobacco smoke does in a closed room.
Grammar: Often describes smells and air: stale air, stale smoke.
The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke.
Open the windows; the air in here is stale.
A stale odor drifted from the old gym bag.
adjectivecomparablefigurative
No longer interesting or effective because it has been used or repeated too often.
Grammar: Used figuratively for ideas, jokes, and routines: a stale joke.
Patterns
- grow stale
- get stale
The comedian's jokes sounded stale to the audience.
After ten years, their routine had grown stale.
We need fresh ideas, not the same stale arguments.
adjectiveafter a verbinformal
Tired and unable to perform well because of too much repetition or a lack of rest.
Grammar: Usually follows feel, get, or become: I feel stale.
Patterns
- feel stale
After weeks of the same drills, the team felt stale.
I'm getting stale; I need a break from writing.
Word forms
| comparative | staler |
|---|---|
| superlative | stalest |
Common combinations
- stale bread
- Stale bread makes excellent toast and pudding.
- stale air
- The basement was full of stale air.
- go stale
- Crisps go stale within days if the bag is left open.
- stale joke
- He told a stale joke that everyone had heard.
- stale smell
- A stale smell hung over the abandoned kitchen.
Synonyms and how they differ
- hackneyed
- Hackneyed is a more formal word used only for overused phrases or ideas, never for food.
- musty
- Musty suggests damp, moldy smells, while stale suggests something that has lost freshness through age or air.
- flat
- Flat is used mainly for drinks that have lost their fizz, whereas stale covers a wider range of foods and ideas.
- tired
- Tired, as applied to ideas, is gentler and more general, while stale implies the idea has been repeated until it has no life left.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: stale or stable?
stale vs stable
Stable means steady and not likely to change or fall; stale means no longer fresh. They look similar but are unrelated.
Practice
We should stop using that opening line; it has become ___ after being used in every presentation this year.
Choose one answer.
Stale describes an idea that has lost its appeal through repetition. Stable and static refer to lack of change in a physical sense, which does not capture boredom.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “stale”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.